Archive for July, 2012

We are happy to see Robert O’Harrrow is shining a light on the vulnerabilities associated with Industrial Control Systems (ICS). The ICS software community is light years behind modern software security. Sadly, we can honestly say that the security of iTunes is more robust than most ICS software. Terry and I plan on releasing some technical details about what we’ve found in the near future, but for now we wanted to talk about some of our experiences with this particular issue.

First, ICS-CERT has done a great job tracking this issue. It’s been months since we first reported the issue to ICS-CERT. Following up with an unresponsive vendor is extremely frustrating. It was apparent that ICS-CERT was making every effort to follow-up with Tridium and they kept us well informed throughout the entire process. We especially want to thank those ICS-CERT analysts who kept us apprised of developments despite the lack of response and unwillingness of Tridium to accept responsibility for the issue.

We are disappointed that it took so long for the public to become aware of this issue. According to the Washington Post article, Tridium became aware of this vulnerability “almost a year ago, when a Niagara customer that uses the software to manage Pentagon facilities turned up issues in an audit”. We are disappointed that even after discovering critical, remotely exploitable vulnerabilities in Tridium software… our government chose to purchase and implement the software anyway. We are disappointed that our tax payer money paid for the ignored security audit, paid for the acquisition, and paid for the implementation/deployment of known vulnerable software. We’d like to challenge our nation’s leadership to evaluate the failures in our current processes surrounding the acquisition of software that support Critical Infrastructure and Industrial Control Systems.

At times, we felt like ICS-CERT had their hands tied. We realize when you are working with vulnerabilities that could affect critical infrastructure, a delicate balance between disclosure and timely notification of affected organizations must be maintained. However, when a vendor is unresponsive or refuses to accept responsibility for an issue, ICS-CERT should have the authority to inform those customers who are vulnerable in a timely manner. DHS and ICS-CERT work for us, the American people… they do not work for the PR departments of ICS companies. ICS-CERT should be able to take the appropriate actions to ensure that we’re safe and to ensure ICS customers have the right information to mitigate and control risk. The PR damage done to any individual company should never be part of this equation. If a vendor is unresponsive or unwilling to accept responsibility for a security issue, ICS-CERT should have the option of disclosing issues (45) days after initial notification from external researchers (this is consistent with CERT/CC’s disclosure timelines). Of course, special circumstances require special handling, but we’re sure the folks at ICS-CERT can make those determinations when needed.

Probably the most disappointing part of the whole ordeal is Tridium’s eagerness to blame the customer. We’ve seen this from other ICS vendors as well. It should never be the customer’s responsibility to have to compensate for poor design. Many ICS vendors expect customers to ensure their product is implemented securely, yet provide zero (or extremely vague) guidance on how to do so. In many cases, secure deployment is simply impossible due to the extremely poor security design. Notification, automatic patching, and secure implementation guidelines in the ICS world are light years behind modern software. We don’t understand Tridium’s claims that, “The firm also is doing more to train customers about security” when the root cause of these issues is poor design and coding practices from Tridium itself. Maybe Tridium should invest in training their developers about security first…

If you would like to contact us about our experiences, please email us at: help – at – fixicssecurity.com